


Lox

by another_Hero



Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: F/F, I guess I don't really see them going for picnics lol so there's that, Sleep, so many of the fics about them are sleepy fics?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 05:08:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15332457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: Debbie wakes up alone, blah blah blah





	Lox

You don’t say, “Oh, there you are,” when you hear Lou shed a pair of pants—what has she been doing?—and climb back into bed behind you, but you think it, word for word. You expect to go to bed without her; you expect a soft bump in the night. And then you start your day with her next to you. This tendency of yours to gather data, to plan for patterns to repeat themselves, your preference for the known, it’s served you well. You only went to prison the one time, and that was because you broke out of your habit. But you can’t prepare for Lou.

She can tell you’re tense, too, and that’s embarrassing first thing in the morning. She kisses your shoulder. “I was just wide awake,” she says. “So I went and got some bagels. Cream cheese and lox are in the fridge. And I put coffee on, since it was just about time for you to get up.” You love her for all of it, for being so thoughtful, for being a person who gets up in the middle of a night’s sleep and buys you bagels. For talking you through it, reassuring you, though she shouldn’t have to do that. “But I’m going to need to sleep at least three more hours,” she says, and of course she is. She’ll join you midmorning as usual. Your worst problem is a partner who gives you breakfast.

“Thanks,” you say. It’s the first you’ve spoken this morning, and it sounds like it. You stretch your legs out and turn over and face her, and the bits of your mind you’ve been scattering since you woke up slot themselves back into place. She has that effect, but she has the scattering effect too. You’re predictable alone; she’s every conflict and every resolution you have. “Sleep tight.”

When you get up, she slides over to take up the whole bed. You toss the extra blanket from the foot of the bed over her too, since she’s alone in there. You’re not sure how it ends up at the foot of the bed every morning—maybe she slides it off of you when she comes in to sleep—but anytime you come in for another sweater, she seems to have it on still, so you keep putting it back over her before you leave. You’ll probably stop soon: the mornings are getting warmer. You wonder whether she’ll wake up that first morning when you decide it’s too warm and think you’ve forgotten her.

You pee and brush your teeth and put on a sweater and house shorts, and you pull your hair out of the braid you sleep in and put it into a ponytail for today, and the coffee is ready by the time you get downstairs. You get the bagel together—the sesame one is yours—and pour a coffee and put in one spoon of sugar and sit at the kitchen table, and you run the scenarios. You wake up alone, and then:

\- She comes back to bed. Maybe she’s been up to something nefarious, but then, why wouldn’t she just do that after you went to sleep but before she did? Maybe she’s bought you bagels.

\- Lou is dead. Could happen, but not more likely than Lou being dead at another time of day. Probably less likely, in fact, if you know she went to bed in the first place. What do you think, that she got out of bed at 5AM to go die? But then, that’s not really what’s worrying you.

\- She doesn’t come back. She’s had a better offer, either from Rusty or from a pretty 25-year-old, or she’d just like to be alone. She doesn’t come back that day. She doesn’t come back that year. She never comes back. It could happen, it’s no use pretending otherwise. You and Lou are bound to each other—the woman had a room ready for you the day you got out of prison—but Lou’s bonds to anything have always been looser than yours, and you left her for five years, eight months, and twelve days, and you left her before that. But, you think, it wouldn’t happen at 5 in the morning after she’d already come to bed. If Lou ever leaves here, that day is going to be loud.

You aren’t willing to miss someone who’s right upstairs; you certainly won’t allow yourself to go look at her. You aren’t a serial killer. So you keep running: what if she never comes back. You can live here. Or you can live somewhere else. You have the money. If you need to work, you have plenty of good people to help you build a team. If you need a friend, well, you have those too now. It didn’t take you long to get used to a bed with her in it. You’d get used to one without. You don’t think it’s an immediate risk, but it’s good to plan for all contingencies.

You’re still doing it, planning your reactions to various crises, not all of them Lou-related at this point, when she comes downstairs, still wearing the tank she slept in. She puts all the remaining cream cheese and lox on the everything bagel and smooths the bag to use as a plate. She sprawls in an opposite chair, one foot on the floor and the other calf resting on the table. It isn’t fair, not given the trouble you yourself have caused her, but you wonder for a moment whether she’s ever worried about anything.

It’s less that she catches you staring and more that she’s known you were staring the entire time, but when she finishes the first half of the bagel she looks up at you with that grin, the kind like she expects something. She’s known you were off since you were barely awake this morning. Could be a new job, could be a good fight, but that’s a face like she expects you to have something for her. “What’s the plan?” she says.

“Baby,” you say, “you’re it.”


End file.
